


even from your shadow

by explosionshark



Series: Ice to Never [2]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, mean flirting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 07:42:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29854806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/explosionshark/pseuds/explosionshark
Summary: “How long have you been here?”“Long enough to know you’re not really needed here, Instructor,” Miranda says, managing to make the title sound both fond and mocking at the same time.Of course Miranda couldn’t give a straight answer to a simple question to save her life. She gets off way too much on this cloak and dagger shit, the spy games, the excuse to use her infuriating I-Know-More-Than-You tone. “And you’ve been spying on me the entire time? Pretty desperate, even for you.”-Jack's having a perfectly boring night out babysitting the Grissom Academy kids and Miranda has to show up and make things interesting, the absolute bitch.
Relationships: Jack | Subject Zero/Miranda Lawson
Series: Ice to Never [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2194944
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	even from your shadow

**Author's Note:**

> another prompt fic! i'm really loving writing this series with these two, i plan on doing more soon. could be read as a standalone, but read part 1 for some more exposition and smut.
> 
> on the fence about a chapter 2. would love thoughts in the comments.
> 
> title from "secret scream" another song by the black queen.

Jack can’t help but feel a little like a chaperone and it’s seriously weirding her out.

If anyone had ever told her she’d find herself in the back table of a club on the Citadel nursing the same glass of whisky for over an hour and making sure a bunch of super-powered biotic teenagers didn’t accidentally piss off some drunk krogan on shore leave and get themselves stomped into paste, she’d have thrown a singularity up their ass for lying.

And yet here she is, nearly midnight, and regretting being out so late because the music is too loud and all she wants is to be collapsed into her bed in the swanky Silversun Strip apartment Shepard is letting her crash in.

God, it’s so unbearably boring of her. Jack grimaces down at her drink and takes another long sip.

It doesn’t help that the kids are being so embarrassingly well-behaved.

Jack hasn’t had to break up _one_ dance floor fist fight, or ill-advised incident of table dancing, or even a single sloppy too-public makeout session.

“I’d offer to buy you a drink, but at the rate you’re going you wouldn’t even finish that one until next week,” the voice comes from just over Jack’s shoulder and if she hadn’t immediately recognized it, hadn’t spent the last several ~~weeks~~ hours daydreaming about it, she wouldn’t have hesitated to warp its owner into oblivion for startling her.

But being a boring, responsible adult or even the kind of sap who gets hung up on the same girl for months, doesn’t mean Jack has lost her edge.

It’s the back of the club: dark and sparsely populated and so boring all night that the bouncers are all half-asleep anyway.

So Jack kicks her chair back from the table, planting one foot on the ground in the same motion, rising from her seat and pivoting on it to turn on Miranda.

She leads with her fist, throwing the first jab at Miranda’s head, but she bats it away easily. That’s fine, Jack was only playing. Jack keeps up the momentum, pressing Miranda back toward the wall, driving the next blow toward her midsection, but she’s blocked again with another swift deflection. Jack swings her foot out toward Miranda’s instep, but she just dances back, effortless.

It occurs to Jack now that they’ve never sparred before — not really. The closest thing they’ve ever been had been for real and interrupted by Shepard before either of them could really get started. But there’s a flow between them anyway, a wordless communication that Jack thinks must come partly from fighting alongside each other for all that time aboard the Normandy and partly from all the sex they’ve been having the past few months. Somehow, without meaning to, she’s managed to absorb so much about how Miranda’s mind works, how she likes to move, the way she uses her body in all things physical. The knowledge fizzles in Jack’s throat, burning better than the over-priced alcohol she’d been drinking.

She almost wishes they were somewhere else, so this could play out more, get more elaborate.

But there’s not much room for Miranda to burn through in the back of the club and Jack’s not actually hoping to get kicked out or discovered. When Miranda’s back hits the wall, she _smirks_ , like _she’s_ the one who’s won this round, and it’s annoying enough for Jack to know she has to make a point. She throws a hand out, flaring her biotics just for show, and presses it against the soft, vulnerable flesh of Miranda’s throat, not gently.

Miranda’s lips part, the barest sigh escaping from between them and Jack wants to lean in, draw that full bottom lip between her teeth and tug until that sigh becomes a gasp.

Instead, she flexes her hand around Miranda’s throat, leans their foreheads together and says, “Got you.”

And Miranda doesn’t even have the decency to struggle or give in, she just meets Jack’s gaze calmly, like Jack’s hand on her throat is no threat at all. Smug bitch.

Miranda’s hand wraps around Jack’s wrist, but she doesn’t try to pull free from Jack’s grip. “Yes, I missed you too, Jack.”

Inexplicably, Jack’s fingers slacken on reflex and that’s the opening Miranda takes, pulling Jack’s hand away from her throat. She guides it up just slightly, eyes still locked on Jack’s face, and presses her mouth to the throbbing pulse on Jack’s wrist and then up, biting gently at the heel of Jack’s palm, and further still to press a smoldering kiss to the center of Jack’s palm.

And suddenly she’s the breathless one, body falling forward into Miranda’s helplessly, pulled like a magnet into her.

“Cheerleader,” Jack wants it to be a growl, a command, but it comes out on a whimper, as a plea.

Miranda isn’t smug about _this_ , at least. Not now, anyway. Jack knows her well enough to know she’ll gloat later, once she’s got Jack in bed, but for now she’s gracious; pressing the same kind of slow, lingering kiss to Jack’s desperate mouth instead.

It feels _so_ good to be with her like this, but the kids are still out there and Jack isn’t ready to share this part of her life with them yet, so she backs away, putting some much-needed distance between them and pretending she doesn’t see the disappointment in Miranda’s eyes at the move. 

“How long have you been here?” _Why didn’t you come up sooner?_

“Long enough to know you’re not really needed here, Instructor,” Miranda says, managing to make the title sound both fond and mocking at the same time.

Of course Miranda couldn’t give a straight answer to a simple question to save her life. She gets off way too much on this cloak and dagger shit, the spy games, the excuse to use her infuriating _I-Know-More-Than-You_ tone. “And you’ve been spying on me the entire time? Pretty desperate, even for you.”

Miranda smiles, doesn’t even try to muster a decent comeback. “Want to get out of here?”

There’s no point in making this easier on her than it has to be. Jack turns on her heel and sets her toppled chair back upright, collapsing into it and picking up her forgotten whisky glass. “Haven’t finished my drink.”

For the first time tonight, Miranda’s composed facade cracks. She rolls her eyes, flicks her hair over her shoulder in the way that means she’s _really_ pissed but trying not to show it, and Jack feels a thrill of satisfaction race up her spine.

“And what’s with that ‘you’re taking too long to finish that’ bullshit, anyway?” Jack mocks. “Just admit you’re too much of a cheapskate to try to get in my pants the classy way. Honestly, without the Illusive Man’s credit card to rack up, you probably need to rely on getting people wasted _more_ , not less to get laid, Miri.”

“Miri?” _Shit._ Miranda’s eyebrows raise and the thunderous expression that had been building on her face immediately dissolves into pleased amusement. And fuck Jack if it’s not just as attractive. “Pet names, Jack?”

“Fuck you, bitch,” Jack says, flushing. Admittedly, not her most creative, but the old standards always do in a pinch.

“I have to admit, I liked Miri better,” Miranda murmurs. She glides across the floor, sitting on the table in front of Jack — which (fortunately? unfortunately?) puts her tits about right at eye level. Jack blames this for the fact that she’s too distracted to stop Miranda from slipping the whisky glass out from Jack’s fingers. She leans back with one hand braced on the table, thrusting her rack out closer towards Jack’s face, and tilts her head back — all that wavy black hair spilling down her back, that long throat glowing red then blue in the pulsing light of the dim club. Deliberately, she tilts the glass back, downing the rest of Jack’s drink in two long swallows that set her throat working obscenely.

It’s only the wooden table cracking that makes Jack realize she’d been using her biotics without meaning too, gripping the surface so hard it snaps under her hands. “Shit.”

Miranda laughs aloud, derisive, and the embarrassment lights a low fire in Jack’s belly.

“Come on,” Miranda says, sliding off the table and looping a finger through a strap on Jack’s harness, leading her forward like some kind of dumb animal and not the most powerful human biotic in existence. “Let’s get out of here before someone makes you pay for that. There’s a mini bar in my hotel room, if you’re that thirsty.”

She’s destroyed entire space stations, dammit. Moons! Taken down entire merc crews single-handedly! Decimated all the brutes and ravagers and every other Reaper abomination that’s been stupid enough to come after her.

She is _not_ the kind of person _anyone_ fucks with, least of all stuck-up, prissy designer-gene assholes like this.

And yet, despite the indignation, Jack follows: breathless and a little shaky and almost too turned on to speak.

Her brain only catches up to her once they’re almost out the door. “Wait. I have to go let them know they’re on their own.”

Miranda doesn’t argue, just lets Jack slip back to the dance floor. She finds Prangley making an idiot of himself on the far corner of the dance floor, and shouts a reminder to send her a message once they’re all safely back home directly into his ear. Then, she remembers she has an omni-tool for this, and sends the same instruction to the rest of the group.

Miranda is waiting for her just outside the club.

Once they’ve started walking, Jack waits a beat and then one more and reaches out into the darkness to slip her hand into Miranda’s. Skin-to-skin, Jack can swear she feels Miranda’s heartbeat in her palm.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on [tumblr](http://explosionshark.tumblr.com) to read more prompt fills that won't make it to ao3 or to send one of your own


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